The Green Line Extension and Community Path are threatened. This Wednesday, we need your help!

Many voices need to be heard – NOW – to ensure that the Green Line Extension is built.

MassDOT and the MBTA have scheduled five public meetings on the Green Line Extension (GLX) and the integrated Community Path (CPX) project, to receive public input/suggestions on ways to reduce the cost of construction.

The full meeting schedule is at the end of this post.

A really big turnout for the first meeting THIS WEDNESDAY will send an important message to MassDOT, the MBTA and the Governor.

It is important to speak out on our commitment to and need for the fully functional GLX.

Keep reading for important details…

Construction of the Green Line Extension and Community Path will provide long needed air quality, public health, transportation and economic development improvement for our communities. We want assurances from MassDOT and MBTA that these critical elements remain in the GLX:

1) The Community Path Extension

2) The GLX Union Square T-Stop

3) The GLX extension to Route 16

The Green Line and Community Path will greatly improve mobility, locally and regionally. The GLX is also critical to economic sustainability for Somerville because it alone will make economic development in Union Square and Boynton Yards possible.

It will bring more jobs to Somerville and increase the currently paltry commercial tax base which will, reverse Somerville’s disastrous dependence on residential property taxesSomerville is a median income community with the greatest shortage of jobs per square mile relative to residents per square mile in the whole state. We are 5000 jobs per square mile short of live work balance! With their much great transit assets, Boston and Cambridge, both have twice as many jobs as resident workers.

Somerville pays about as much for MBTA service as Newton, and far more than Quincy, which has four Red Line Stations, numerous bus routes and a commuter rail station. Newton is served by Green Line, commuter rail, and express bus service. Yet Somerville has only two T-stops, in Davis Square and more recently Assembly Square. With 7000 people per square mile living in carless households, this is far short of what is needed and fair. Notably, we built the Assembly Square T-stop without a dollar of MBTA capital. No other cities’ subway or light rail stations have had as much local subsidy.

The Green Line and Community Path will provide huge air quality, public health, and economic benefits.

Our community is the most overrun in the state by highway traffic (over 200,000 vehicle miles traveled per square mile per day) and diesel commuter rail lines (200 trains per day). The regional highways and diesel commuter rail, which have long driven though and over Somerville, at our expense with little local benefit, are the backbone of the Boston and Cambridge economies. We also host the untaxed MBTA Boston Engine Terminal, which services all commuter rail locomotives.

For far too long Somerville has suffered so the region could prosper.

Now we have an opportunity to lead by example and to show everyone what a sustainable community can look like with as a diverse median income city, with mixed income housing, expanded green space, live work balance and much healthier, cost effective clean transit, walking and biking serving as the foundation for our shared future.

It’s also a matter of social, economic, and environmental justice.

We need your help getting your friends and neighbors to demand that MassDOT, the MBTA and Commonwealth meet their commitments to build the Green Line Extension, including the Community Path and the Union Square spur.